America’s Energy Needs: Joe Trotter on ALEC Breakdown

America’s energy industry is hurting.

As projected demand rises with every passing day, the call for increased production is met with revoked permits, denial of access, and burdensome regulations that makes satisfying those projections nearly impossible.

Though natural gas and nuclear power serve as the largest sources of electrical generation, the US still must rely on traditional energy producers such a coal and hydro. But will those options be cast aside before their replacements are ready to pick up the slack?

President Biden Denying Access & Permits

According to Joe Trotter, director of ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, the current official energy approach is counterproductive when it comes to extracting and processing raw materials crucial for energy infrastructure such as copper and rare earth minerals.

We’ve seen attacks on permits for copper mines for rare earth mineral mines for oil, gas, and coal, and now you’re seeing this enormous tap from the EPA in the form of a regulation that would essentially close all coal power plants. While we can debate whether or not coal is an essential part of our country’s energy mix, we saw in 2022 that the United States and the world were having a love affair with natural gas. But when we experienced international instability, like the Russian attack on Ukraine, we saw the markets totally upended in terms of natural gas pricing.

Relying on Russian & Kazakhstan Uranium

Trotter also pointed out that nuclear power faces hurdles due to the administration’s restrictions on uranium mining in the U.S., leading to reliance on imports from Kazakhstan and Russia.

There is also this war on nuclear where the Biden administration declared vast swathes of Arizona, the specific areas that have the best uranium fuel for our reactors, off limits using his national monument authority. So instead of utilizing our own natural supply of uranium, we are getting the vast majority of our uranium from Kazakhstan and Russia

Watch the entire interview here.